Her name sways opinion and draws publicity to cases like one against a Plant City phosphate plant. But the jury's out on what it means in court.
By RON MATUS
Published April 11, 2004
Shannon Franco always suspected her 3-year-old son's autism and speech disorders weren't a matter of chance. In September, she got confirmation.
That's when Masry & Vititoe, the California law firm that employs Erin Brockovich - the Erin Brockovich - announced it would pursue a lawsuit against Coronet Industries, the Plant City phosphate processor that Franco and her neighbors accuse of poisoning them.
Brockovich would never take on Coronet, Franco thought, unless evidence showed the company really was hurting people.
She cried at the news.
"All of a sudden I realized somebody was going to take responsibility for hurting my child," she said.
Comforting residents coping with tragedy isn't the only way Brockovich has shaped the Coronet case - or other cases around the country that involve corporate polluters and claims of personal injury. When she rides to the rescue, complicated cases that involve hard-core science and huge financial stakes sometimes become imprinted with a Hollywood story line that may not jibe with the facts.
It's a story the news media love to repeat.
Brockovich, of course, is the former office clerk made famous by Julia Roberts' cleavage-flashing, Oscar-winning portrayal in a 2000 movie.
She is also a publicity magnet.
She has never set foot in Hillsborough County's rural Plant City, but her name alone is influencing news coverage, attracting clients and conferring credibility to illness reports.
Masry & Vititoe representatives say Brockovich is a researcher on the Coronet case, but news stories repeatedly refer to her as a "famed environmental crusader." According to the tag line for the movie, she "brought a small town to its feet and a huge corporation to its knees."
No one disputes that Brockovich played a huge role in the Hinkley, Calif., case that inspired the movie. But the living, breathing Erin Brockovich-Ellis (she remarried in 1999) is not always in synch with the silver-screen image that precedes her.
While the toxic mess unearthed by Brockovich in the movie did net Masry & Vititoe a $333-million settlement, the real case against Pacific Gas & Electric also produced an outcome that ultimately angered plaintiffs, puzzled pollution experts and led to serious ethical questions about the judges who presided over the arbitration process.
More recently, Brockovich's credibility has been questioned by her stunning allegation last year that oil wells are making kids gravely sick at posh Beverly Hills High School in California.
Some observers say Brockovich is doing battle with powerful corporations and legions of silk-stockinged lawyers. If celebrity status gives her a little more punch, well, that levels the playing field.
Besides, Brockovich and her boss, Ed Masry, earned that status by "being very good at what they do," said Texas lawyer Jim Ross, who is working with them on the Coronet case.
Some critics wonder. They describe a different Brockovich - one who brazenly uses her name to reel in clients and hype flimsy evidence.
When Brockovich first aired the pollution charges in Beverly Hills, Norma Zager, editor of the tiny Beverly Hills Courier, said she thought, "Wow, this is probably true."
But dozens of stories later, the editor has a different take on the controversy - and a new opinion of Brockovich.
"She's not a crusader," Zager said. "She's an opportunist."
* * *
Hollywood's Erin Brockovich is irresistible.
The movie character is scrappy and salty, a down-on-her-luck single mom who finds work at a tiny law firm, stumbles on a connection between a polluting company and a desperately sick town, and follows her heart and grit to a nine-figure settlement.
Since the movie, the real-life Erin Brockovich has soared.
Now research director for Masry & Vititoe, she has lectured at colleges, hosted a TV show about women who triumph over injustice, and lent her name to Organic Valley milk cartons. No less an icon than Oprah Winfrey introduced Brockovich on her show as a "real-life heroine."
Masry & Vititoe gets hundreds of calls every week from people around the country. In Aurelius, N.Y., Dale Buchberger e-mailed the firm about pollution he feared was spreading into wells from a GE plant.
"We wanted a bulldog," the chiropractor said. "We wanted a great white shark."
Brockovich and lawyer Ed Masry called back three days later and are now helping a New York firm that filed suit.
Her mere interest draws a crowd.
On at least four occasions since the movie came out, Masry & Vititoe told potential clients and/or local media that Brockovich and other officials with the firm would meet with residents to discuss their plight, only to announce later that Brockovich couldn't make it.
In October it happened in the Coronet case, when hundreds of residents and a celebrity-hungry flock of reporters showed up in a Lakeland hotel not far from Plant City.
Brockovich couldn't come, Masry told the crowd, because she was busy working on the Coronet case back in California. Also, he said, Brockovich is sensitive to sulfur emissions and couldn't be within a few miles of the Coronet plant.
To star-stuck residents, it didn't matter.
On March 18, the firm filed suit on behalf of more than 700 plaintiffs, with Shannon Franco and her son, Nicholas, topping the list.
Before Masry & Vititoe took the case, the firm asked Franco to retrieve documents about Coronet from a state office near Tampa. Afterward, Franco got an unexpected call.
It was Brockovich. She said several pages were missing.
"She was like, "Shannon, I need those documents. Where are they?' " Franco said. "I could tell that the way Julia Roberts portrayed her in the movie was just right."
Brockovich did not return repeated requests for comment for this story.
* * *
The Coronet and Beverly Hills cases are among the first in which the full power of Brockovich's celebrity is on display.
Both involve corporations with deep pockets, allegations of cancer clusters and an atmosphere of fear. In both, Masry & Vititoe has signed up hundreds of clients and charged the government with a coverup.
In Beverly Hills, Brockovich said she got involved after meeting a 28-year-old school alumnus suffering from Hodgkin's disease and thyroid cancer. On a hunch, Brockovich tested the air around the school and found "alarming levels" of benzene, a cancer-causing substance found in petroleum products. She pointed to oil wells on and near campus.
Within months, Masry & Vititoe filed suit against the city, the school district and three oil companies.
The media can't get enough. A local TV station ran a special report titled, "Toxic School?" The story has been featured on CNN, MSNBC and the Today show, where Brockovich was interviewed by Katie Couric. People magazine did a story. So did the New York Times. So did the Sunday Telegraph in London.
For Brockovich, the case hasn't been without setbacks.
Last summer, the Beverly Hills City Council issued a subpoena for Masry & Vititoe's initial pollution results - the results Brockovich had called "alarming" - because in repeated tests, government agencies found no evidence of elevated pollution levels.
After a six-week standoff, the firm unveiled its data.
According to news reports, it showed the highest benzene reading came from a single, instantaneous test - and even then was not above state standards. Another test, which measured levels over a period of eight hours, showed levels were on par with the rest of metro Los Angeles.
The firm's response: Any benzene is bad. Especially at a school.
* * *
Some who dealt with Masry & Vititoe in the past aren't surprised.
Mark Nuaimi, mayor of Fontana, Calif., accuses the firm of stirring up unfounded fears in the mid 1990s about a nearby toxic waste site. When tests showed there was no health hazard to residents, Masry & Vititoe withdrew without filing suit, leaving behind people convinced the site was "a death camp waiting to happen," Nuaimi said.
In 1997, Masry & Vititoe filed suit against the Unocal oil company in a case involving leaking oil facilities in Avila Beach, Calif.
Flush with credibility from the $333-million Hinkley suit, Brockovich signed up dozens of plaintiffs and the firm's experts rang alarms about pollution on the beach. Playing in the sand could be a health risk, they said ominously, even though tests by health officials showed the beaches were clean.
In 1999, Masry & Vititoe settled for a reported $3-million, a relatively meager amount that left clients miffed.
When the movie came out, some were outraged.
To portray Erin Brockovich as "anything more than a dog-and-pony show," plaintiff Roger Mackenzie told the San Luis Obispo New Times, "is just ridiculous."
* * *
Even without Brockovich, the Coronet case is compelling.
In one corner: towering smokestacks, ponds filled with polluted wastewater, a company with a history of environmental violations.
In the other corner: scared residents and heart-ripping stories of illness.
Unlike the Beverly Hills case, concerns about Coronet, which shut down March 31, are home-grown. Residents had whispered about bad water and car-coating dust for years before Brockovich ever heard of Plant City. Indeed, it was a resident's letter to federal officials that sparked an ongoing, multiagency investigation.
But Brockovich's involvement has further fueled the controversy.
The Tampa Tribune wrote front-page stories when Brockovich expressed interest in the case; when Masry & Vititoe said it would pursue the case; and when the firm filed suit. Both the Tribune and the St. Petersburg Times have defined her in glowing terms.
It's unclear when Brockovich and her firm first became involved in the case, or whether they have actively sought media coverage.
Franco said she called Masry & Vititoe at the end of July, after the Tribune began a series of stories. But Jim Ross, the Texas attorney working with the firm, said lawyers were involved before those stories appeared - in late spring or early summer.
Residents aren't the only ones who see Brockovich's interest as proof the case is credible. Last month, a Sierra Club official invoked her name after local TV stations questioned the group's political ads, which cited the Coronet case in criticizing President Bush's environmental policies.
Coronet spokesman Tom Stewart said Masry & Vititoe use Brockovich's name to sway its case, but more often lets the media do the swaying for it.
Brockovich's golden reputation gives the firm "a pass," Stewart said. "They don't get as much scrutiny in their comments or statements as we do or the government officials do."
Prompted by residents' concerns, a team of government agencies began a yearlong investigation last summer, testing air, water and soil; poring over cancer databases; even taking urine samples.
Its preliminary conclusion: It's not that bad.
In the most troubling finding, about 40 private wells showed elevated levels of arsenic, boron, radioactive particles and/or other pollutants. In some, the levels exceeded government drinking-water standards and prompted authorities to deliver bottled water. But even then, health officials said, the pollution levels were not high enough to cause serious or widespread harm.
Throughout the process, investigators have spoken cautiously, even after an analysis of Florida's cancer registry showed rates near Coronet were normal.
Masry & Vititoe, on the other hand, has hotly challenged the government findings, with one representative calling the cancer-rate study "patently ludicrous."
The firm has not offered its own test results or medical studies.
* * *
One legal expert sees a bigger story in Brockovich's rise.
A growing number of high-profile legal eagles such as Brockovich and Johnnie Cochran are using the power of celebrity to influence cases, said New York Law School professor Richard K. Sherwin, who has written a book about the nexus between law and pop culture.
"Media love media," he said.
The result: A legal process increasingly swayed by spin and public relations, not facts and evidence.
Franco, the lead plaintiff against Coronet, has more pressing worries. Her son will suffer for the rest of his life. She spends hours in therapy with him every day. Just knowing someone as powerful as Erin Brockovich will fight for him is "comforting," she said.
"Even if Erin was Houdini," she said, "she couldn't slant a case that much."
- Times researcher Cathy Wos contributed to this report. Ron Matus can be reached at 813 226-3405 or matus@sptimes.com
